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Queensland's Sunshine Coast A Big Winner For Lottery Sector; Punters To Win Homes Via BoysTown Gambling...

It's steal from the rich to give to the poor! Ok, not exactly, but read on and you will get the drift soon enough. The Sunshine Coast has long been regarded as a prize location by local residents, but now a range of national and state lottery organisations are taking notice. BoysTown Lotteries recently unveiled a million-dollar home in Buderim as its latest prize home offering. Located at 22 Orme Rd, the home is part of a prize package worth more than $1.5 million. It is arguably one of Buderim’s most beautiful homes, according to BoysTown’s general manager fundraising Keith Coventry. "Our previous lottery prize home was in Nerang (Gold Coast) and the one before that was in Rainbow Bay (Coolangatta). Now we find ourselves in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast. When deciding on a prize home, we look at the property itself and then the desirability of the location and the features of the area," Coventry said. "I think the thing about Buderim is that you are close to the beach, but you also have those great views over the ocean and the coastline. I guess you get the best of both worlds. "The Buderim home has been particularly popular and the retail sales have been very strong." Yet another contender in the Coast’s prize pool is a home in Mount Coolum, raising funds for the Mater Foundation as part of the Mater Prize Home Lottery. Also sporting a million-dollar price tag, the home is located at 47 Boardwalk Blvd in Coolum’s Boardwalk Estate. Twin Waters is the site of Surf Life Saving Lottery’s prize home, which is valued at more than $750,000. The three-bedroom home at Lot 4 Ameen Cct comes with $41,832 in furniture and electrical, along with 12 months paid council rates. Coventry said funds raised from the BoysTown lottery would assist the Kids Helpline service, which was in particular demand since the recent floods. "Kids Helpline is certainly taking a lot more calls from kids who are worried about the impacts of the floods, or who have been affected by the floods. A lot of people are seeking assistance with the mental health aspects of this natural disaster, so I think that is certainly going to be the focus of much of our fundraising over the coming months." The money raised from Mater lotteries help funds medical research teams and the purchase of life-saving medical equipment, as well as supporting patients and families. Surf Life Saving lotteries assist Surf Life Saving clubs around the country. Aussies, feeling lucky. Go on, give them a go, and you know the money is going to a good place, if you don't happen to win. Mind you, feel welcome to check out the slots, poker, bingo and other casino games showcased on the portal also. BoysTown Lottery will set you back a bit, while at Media Man partners like PartyGaming, many games can be played for free or for money. The choice if yours. Hours of entertainment for young and old - just kidding, check legalities but most counties insist you are at least 18 years old to gamble, and that includes from lottery to poker to slots, ok crew!

A lottery is a form of gambling which involves the drawing of lots for a prize. Some governments outlaw it, while others endorse it to the extent of organizing a national lottery. It is common to find some degree of regulation of lottery by governments.

At the beginning of the 20th century, most forms of gambling, including lotteries and sweepstakes, were illegal in many countries, including the U.S.A. and most of Europe. This remained so until after World War II. In the 1960s casinos and lotteries began to appear throughout the world as a means to raise revenue in addition to taxes.

Lotteries are most often run by or on behalf of national or local governments. They are sometimes described as a regressive tax, albeit a voluntary one, since those most likely to buy tickets, and to spend a larger proportion of their money on them, are typically less affluent people. The astronomically high odds against winning the larger prizes have also led to the epithets of a "tax on stupidity" and a "math tax". Although the use of the word "tax" is not strictly correct, these descriptions are intended to suggest that lotteries are government-sanctioned operations which will attract only those people who fail to understand that buying a lottery ticket is a poor economic decision. Indeed, after taking into account the present value of a given lottery prize as a single lump sum cash payment, the impact of any taxes that might apply, and the likelihood of having to share the prize with other winners, it is not uncommon to find that a ticket for a major lottery is worth less than one third of its purchase price. In other words, if a lottery ticket costs US$1 to purchase, its true economic worth may be only US$0.30 or so at the time of purchase. Of course, this is just a hypothetical example, and the actual value will depend on the details of each lottery. Some lotteries may offer tickets that are worth less than 20% of their price, while others may be worth over 50%. To raise money, lottery operators must offer tickets worth much less than what one pays for them, so the lottery is a bad choice for customers trying to come out ahead.

Lotteries come in many formats. The prize can be a fixed amount of cash or goods. In this format there is risk to the organizer if insufficient tickets are sold. More commonly the prize fund will be a fixed percentage of the receipts. A popular form of this is the "50-50" draw where the organizers promise that the prize will be 50% of the revenue. Many recent lotteries allow purchasers to select the numbers on the lottery ticket resulting in the possibility of multiple winners.

The purchase of lottery tickets by large numbers of people is arguably economically irrational. However, in addition to the chance of winning, the ticket may enable some purchasers to experience a thrill and to indulge in a fantasy of becoming wealthy. If the entertainment value (or other non-monetary value) obtained by playing is high enough for a given individual, then the purchase of a lottery ticket could actually represent a gain in overall utility. In such a case, the monetary loss would be outweighed by the non-monetary gain, thus making the purchase a rational decision for that individual.

Lottery tickets are usually scanned in large numbers, using marksense-technology. With today's computer performance, it takes less than one second to check if a particular combination was picked up by anyone, even for lotteries like Euromillions or Mega Millions.

Early history

The first recorded signs of a lottery are Keno slips from the Chinese Han Dynasty between 205 and 187 B.C. These lotteries are believed to have helped to finance major government projects like the Great Wall of China. From the Chinese "The Book of Songs" (second millennium B.C.) comes a reference to a game of chance as "the drawing of wood", which in context appears to describe the drawing of lots. From the Celtic era, the Cornish words "teulet pren" translates into "to throw wood" and means "to draw lots". The Iliad of Homer refers to lots being placed into Agamemnon's helmet to determine who would fight Hector.

The first known European lotteries were held during the Roman Empire, mainly as an amusement at dinner parties. Each guest would receive a ticket, and prizes would often consist of fancy items such as dinnerware. Every ticket holder would be assured of winning something. This type of lottery, however, was no more than the distribution of gifts by wealthy noblemen during the Saturnalian revelries. The earliest records of a lottery offering tickets for sale is the lottery organized by Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar. The funds were for repairs in the City of Rome, and the winners were given prizes in the form of articles of unequal value.
The earliest public lottery on record is that which was held in the Dutch town of Sluis in 1434.

The first recorded lotteries to offer tickets for sale with prizes in the form of money were held in the Low Countries during the period 1443–1449. Various towns in Flanders (parts of Belgium, Holland, and France) held public lotteries to raise money for town fortifications, and to help the poor. The town records of Ghent, Utrecht, and Bruges indicate that lotteries may be even older. A record dated May 9, 1445 at L'Ecluse refers to raising funds to build walls and town fortifications, with a lottery of 4,304 tickets and total prize money of 1737 florins.[1] In the 17th century it was quite usual in the Netherlands to organize lotteries to collect money for the poor. Tickets cost about four guilders, and the prizes were paintings (50 to 100 per lottery); some by painters today considered famous such as Jan van Goyen.

The Dutch were the first to have solely cash prizes and to base these prizes on the odds of winning — roughly a quarter of tickets winning a prize. The lottery proved very popular and was hailed as a painless form of taxation. In the Netherlands the lottery was used to raise money in support of the poor, to build dikes and town defenses, and to free sailors from slavery in Arab countries. The English word lottery stems from the Dutch word loterij, which is derived from the Dutch noun lot meaning fate. The Dutch state-owned staatsloterij is the oldest running lottery. (Credit: Wikipedia).